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Friday 30 November 2018 | Fr Jack McLain SJ

Learning From Failure

This week has been one that has confronted me with the dark history of my Jesuit family. As you would be aware, a former Jesuit brother was convicted of abusing students while he worked here in boarding many years ago. Personally, I find the history troubling because of the lack of acknowledgment of the past and it fills me with shame that a member of my ‘family’ has used us and the people he was supposed to serve to harm them. But as troubling as this near-past history is, looking away from it, refusing to acknowledge it as a part of our history would be worse.

Each and every week, hundreds of phone calls are answered on the Regis and the Senior Campus. Behind the greeting is the ebullient, effervescent, ever-cheerful and ever-helpful Kate Lester and Bruna Smith who respond to all manner of inquiries from lost football boots to urgent dentist appointments, and sometimes distressed calls related to sickness and loss. Not infrequently it is the media who have picked up on some newsworthy snippet, or, a disgruntled neighbour with a complaint about parking on a day that sees the community flock to the College for a school event. Our front line is unflappable and ever responsive to the array of demands that come from parents, Old Boys, past parents, Jesuit agencies from across Australia and throughout the world and strange as it may seem, a few dozen wrong numbers each day!

Last month, an Australian naval vessel, HMAS Wollongong, intercepted a boat carrying 65 asylum seekers en route to New Zealand in international waters. It is alleged that an Australian official in civilian clothes boarded the asylum-seeker’s vessel and proceeded to pay US$6,000 to the captain and then $5,000 to each of five crew members to return the refugees to Indonesia in two replacement boats. When one of the boats ran out of fuel, the asylum-seekers transferred to the second boat. It eventually hit a reef, from where the passengers were rescued by local villagers. This week, an Indonesian police general provided photos of the cash and statements by the smugglers who described the alleged transaction.

An innocent enough question from that lawyer to Jesus in Luke’s gospel. Jesus responded with a parable rather than a definition – the story of The Good Samaritan. That story broke every barrier of sectarianism, cultural history and baggage, prejudice and insularity imaginable for his Jewish audience. In our time, looking after one’s neighbour challenges self-interest, myopia and that old Australian cop-out, “I’m alright, Jack”. In the broadest of visions, Ignatius used to tell his Jesuits, “The world is our home.” In that tradition in which we find ourselves. It is a reason that impels us to send our young men to serve on Immersions. It is something to be reminded of.

For more than a decade I have been taking groups of young Aloysians and Ignatians on Immersions to the Philippines. On each occasion, we spend about four days working with the Jesuit Prison Ministry at the National Penitentiary, Muntinlupa, south of Manila. Part of that experience is to visit the now-disused building where, during the Presidency of Joseph Estrada, seven prisoners were killed by lethal injection – all of them poor. Estrada’s successor, Gloria Arroyo suspended capital punishment in 2006 and 1,230 death row inmates were commuted to life imprisonment.Upon arrival at this rather insignificant-looking building, the boys see the twin notices at the entrance: “Bureau of Correction” and “Lethal Injection Chamber”. Immediately they sense the irony. Correction and execution. The same ambiguity has faced many in our nation in recent months as we have traced the fate of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia. If Andrew and Myuran were not rehabilitated (as evidenced by their reformed and influential lives) then what does rehabilitation mean? What then is a correctional centre? And with post-Easter season language still fresh in our minds, what about redemption?

Although only two weeks of the year have elapsed, the College has settled quickly into its embracing rhythms. The boys who were a little overwhelmed in the early days are finding their way around the grounds and the classrooms, exuding an appreciable familiarity with the structures and routines of College life.